Containment Without Isolation: The Intellectual Origins of Sino-American Rapprochement

This dissertation attempts to fill a hole in rapprochement literature by examining the origins and acceptance of containment without isolation by the Johnson administration.

This dissertation suggests that the foundation for Sino-American rapprochement was laid during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Sino-American rapprochement was a process not an event.

Rapprochement was possible only after American views toward China underwent a paradigm shift.

Mid-level bureaucrats in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, changing international events, members of Congress and scholars of East Asian studies contributed to this paradigm shift.

While historians Evelyn Goh, Michael Lumbers and Guangqiu Xu have previously examined many of these elements, no academic has intensively studied the role of scholars of East Asian studies.

As a result, this dissertation interweaves each of these factors into the Sino-American rapprochement narrative.

To uncover changing American conceptions of and policies toward Communist China, this dissertation combines intellectual and diplomatic history with political science theory.